The Worlds are now over. The prize giving ceremony was emotive and there was a great ambiance of friendship - with the PF1 winners listening to the Spanish hymn hands held and the top teams, UK, France & Spain, mixing on the stage for the pictures. All the rivalries were quickly forgotten, although we know that not all the pilots were happy in the end - specially with the changes on positions after the cancellation of the cloverleaf task. After the prizes -including diplomas to the two PL1 female pilots, Michaela Machartova and Jansy Kelly, for being the first women to win tasks in a Paramotor World Championship (after the protests and juries decisions, Laura Beaumont was 2nd on the turnpoint hunt)- we were all taken to a farewell dinner, where the pilots swapped team t-shirts and we could even see Laura as she took her t-shirt off to hand it to a Southafrican pilot and put his team shirt on (sorry, no pictures!)

We have hundreds of pictures and a few interviews that we plan to publish soon, just give us some days to recover energy sightseeing in Beijing… When we are back home we’ll try to summarize the best and most interesting of this event in an article in Ojovolador.com.

It’s been great covering this Championships and meeting so many great pilots and persons. Congratulations to the best pilots of the World and to all who came to China and gave their best despite the language and organization problems, illnesses or engine failures. Happy flights!

After hard deliberations last afternoon from the judges of the championship and the FAI, the classifications give the first place to Ramon Morillas (ES) in the foot-launched solo class, with Mathieu Rouanet (FR) second and Michel Carnet (UK) third. France is the winning PF1 team.
In trikes, Daniel Crespo could keep the leadership and takes the gold, with Nino Muelas and Antonio Lope winning in the tandem class (PL2). Spain is first by PL teams.
The judges had to make tough decisions to solve the protests presented, which were decisive to define the first positions of the championship. It was a nail-biting afternoon at the airfield, specially for the top pilots and teams. The French team demanded that Mathieu had kicked correctly one of the cloverleaf sticks that the judges had not given him, which reduced around 300 points from his results -little more than what separated him from the first position. Ramon protested for the same task that one of the marshals had waved a red flag to him while he was completing the circuit, which disturbed him and caused a significant reduction in his performance. The judges accepted both pilots’ protests, meaning that Mathieu took the first place momentarily but then the task was cancelled (and so was the difference gained by Mathieu) because it hadn’t offered equal conditions to all pilots. This decision was not happily received by some of the teams -besides the French. Team Poland had done very well in this task and even broke the world record of speed for the cloverleaf, so they were seen very upset with the news. “Scandal, scandal!” they shouted after reading the FAI juries’ notice on the board . Their position by teams was also affected by the cancellation. But it was not bad for all. The Canadians had been mistakenly training the cloverleaf slalom in the wrong direction and so they did it in the Championship… scoring very few points in that task. When it was cancelled they leaped ahead of Poland in the teams ranking! (We still have to confirm this information, as we do not have the official results yet). Ramon also demanded a turnpoint done correctly in the turnpoint hunt Navigation, where he supposedly had gone some 5 metres out of it. The Spanish team took the hassle to go and check the exact place of the turnpoint according to the GPS to prove that Ramon had gone correctly in the area, and the protest was accepted adding the corresponding points to his results. And so on, until solving a dozen protests that introduced changes in the ranking many times: each of the 3 top pilots was on the World Champion position at least once during the day. In PL1, the Polish also put a complaint against Daniel Crespo for touching the ground after completing the slow leg of the Fast-Slow, but they finally had to accept that the rules don’t penalize this once the time has been closed.

Late in the evening the official result was finally announced: Ramon was taking the gold. The Spanish team gathered at a karaoke bar next to the hotel to make a very positive balance of their performance in the championships: 3 individual gold medals (PF1, PL1, PL2), one Team gold medal (PL1) and Team bronze medal in PF1. The night went on in a festive mood after the arrival of some of the Canadians, Belgians, Germans and FAI juries to celebrate the conclusion of this 5th Paramotor World Championship.

While we wait for the official final results of the Worlds, have a look at some of the pictures we could take yesterday evening, the only free flying time of the Championship (today, the pilots were allowed to go to the Great Wall again!) More pictures in our Album of China.

EDIT (3:40pm):The last task of the Worlds, schedulled to start at 3pm, has been cancelled because it was not a task included in the local catalogue of tasks of the championship. The Worlds are probably over now. The organization office has now to respond to the complaints and confirm that no other task will be flown. Ramon Morillas and Daniel Crespo, both from Spain, are on the top positions of the solo classes but still with pending claims. So is Mathieu Rouanet, placed 2nd in the PF1 general classification. We’ll still have to wait to know who the winners are!!

The pilots are preparing the very probable last task (10th) of the Worlds, a navigation with estimations of speed. The objective is to fly and mark the turnpoints declared by the pilot before take off, enter a control waypoint at an exact time, continue flying along the declared turnpoints and close the task at an exact time on the closing waypoint, then land on deck. This task replaced the announced navigation with unknown points. For the leading pilots there’s still some uncertainty regarding the final results, as the organization office has not resolved all the complaints presented by the teams yet. If some of them are accepted there could be significant changes in the final points and positions of the first competitors. The slow response from the organization has been criticized by some of the team leaders, who claim that their teams cannot work on the best strategy to finish the championship if they don’t have the final results, but this has not had any effect on setting today’s last task. The pilots, then, will have to fly their best as they will not know wether they will be fighting for a medal or defending their positions. In a way, it will make this final a very interesting one. Tomorrow, we should all know who are the new world champions of our sport.

Yesterday’s task, the speed Triangle and Out and return, gave some surprises. In foot-launched, the winner was UK’s Paul Bailey (916 points, Ozone Viper/Bailey Aviation), followed by his teammate Dave Hairs (881, Dudek Plasma/Bailey) and third the Canadian David Sigier (Nervures Kailash/Miniplane). On 4th, 5th and 6th are Mathieu, Ramon and Michel. In the general classifications Ramon is still on 1st place, but Mathieu is back on 2nd and Michel is 3rd. There’s still this morning’s task to be scored, the Slow-Fast (9th task) with a maximum of 500 points.In trike (PL1) the girls of this class took the first places in the task! UK’s Jansy Kelly (Dudek Reaction/Bailey) did an impeccable task and took most of the points (990), with Michaela Machartova 2nd (706, Jojo Speedy/Jojo) and third the Chinese Gao Desong (676, Paramania Revolution/Miniplane). Daniel Crespo could only take the points of the triangle (407) after an out landing, but is still leading the general ranking, closely followed by Tomasz Kudaszewicz (POL) and Michaela.